A gentleman and a player: remembering Mike Robinson

iPolitics Insights

The last time I had lunch with Mike Robinson, he was talking about how much he was looking forward to spending the summer at his place on the coast of Normandy, after the completion of extensive renovations to his family’s second home of some 30 years.

I asked him what it was like, as an English-speaking foreigner, dealing with notoriously difficult French tradesmen and suppliers.
“We get along,” he said.

Mike got along with everyone. It probably helped that his beloved wife ML, Mary Louise Walsh, was always there. It probably didn’t hurt that Canadians helped liberate Normandy in the Second World War. With his strong sense of history, Mike would have known he’d never have to mention that.

And it was there that he died, suddenly, on Canada Day at age 65, at the beginning of what was to have been a summer spent doting on his four children and four grandchildren, to say nothing of constant visits from friends.

He wasn’t going to be around all summer at his customary seat in the Earnscliffe booth at the Métropolitain restaurant on Sussex Drive in Ottawa. At the consulting firm he co-founded, the Met was known as “the cafeteria.” On Tuesday evening, the cafeteria was open for a reception for hundreds of Mike’s friends, following a moving memorial service at Beechwood Cemetery.

With his flair for event management, Mike would have approved of both venues. Beechwood is Canada’s national military cemetery, on the edge of Rockcliffe in the heart of a town he loved. It’s the final resting place of a prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, and a governor general, Ray Hnatyshyn — both Conservatives, and Mike was nothing if not a Liberal, but he was a Canadian first. And the Met, well … that’s where you could find him nearly every day at lunch, with bartender Mike Hannas always close at hand to refresh his glass of red wine and discuss the menu.

At Tuesday’s reception, Mike Hannas wasn’t working; he was a guest and a friend. So many friends, and so many stories. Conservative strategist Harry Near, co-founder of the Earnscliffe Strategy Group, told some great ones in his eulogy for his partner of more than a quarter century.

On one hole, Mike hit two balls that came so close to Jean Chrétien that the Mounties were concerned. Later, Chrétien told Mike: ‘I know you guys want Martin to be prime minister — but you don’t have to kill me to do it.’

Harry was telling the story of Mike doing a television panel during the 1993 federal election. His Conservative counterpart John Tory, now mayor of Toronto, said the Liberals didn’t have a plan for a particular campaign issue. Mike brandished the Liberal platform, the Red Book, and said, “It says so right here on page 55.”

“It turned out,” Harry said, “that the Red Book only had 46 pages.”

He told a story from the Royal Ottawa Golf Club, where he and Mike were regulars in a Sunday morning game that included Jean Chrétien when he was prime minister. Mike had been chair of Paul Martin’s leadership campaign in 1990, but every second Sunday he would be in Chrétien’s foursome.

As Harry told it, Chrétien didn’t wait for others to hit and with his RCMP detail would walk ahead of the foursome. On one hole, he said, Mike hit two balls that came so close to the PM that the Mounties were concerned.

Later, Chrétien told Mike: “I know you guys want Martin to be prime minister — but you don’t have to kill me to do it.”

It was typical of Mike to get along with the Chrétien crowd, even though there was never any doubt that he belonged to the Martin camp. His prime minister was among the eulogists, and told several delightful stories at his own expense.

As Near also put it, Mike was “respected deeply as a stalwart ally or worthy opponent.” He was a gentleman and a player, a man of influence admired on all sides.

His political opponents and business competitors were also his friends — people like Mike Coates, now president of Hill and Knowlton Strategies for the Americas in New York. “Mike gave me my first job back in the day of Public Affairs International,” Coates recalled. They ended up on opposite sides of the table as representatives of the Liberal and Conservative parties in the leaders’ debate negotiations with the network television consortium during the 2006 election campaign.

“He thought we were barbarians,” Coates said with a chuckle.

As a competitor in the government relations business, Coates and his H&K colleagues also had a deep respect for the brand that Robinson, Near and their colleagues had built over 27 years. Having long since moved on from its modest start-up space on Sparks Street, Earnscliffe now occupies a splendid heritage building with the firm’s name on it overlooking the National War Memorial on Elgin. Mike understood succession issues, and he was in the process of moving on — but he still went to the office every day and the staff adored him.

He was also a mentor, in business and politics. James Baxter, the founder and editor of iPolitics, recalls Mike encouraging him to start this news site. John Duffy, author of the award-winning Fights of Our Lives on great Canadian campaigns, said that “Mike made me” when he brought him in as a 20-something speechwriter for Martin in the 1990 Liberal leadership campaign.

Many such stories were told at the Met Tuesday night. Mike would have enjoyed them all. But perhaps he would have most enjoyed the one told by his son Drew, in his eulogy, about the love between Mike and ML.

“He always said the secret of a happy marriage could be summarized by two words: ‘Yes, dear.’”

Only perfect.

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